Car & Driver disses buying old economy cars to save fuel

[99metro]

Politics.

Everybody MUST buy a brand new car or you will die.

At least that's what I read.

[IndyIan]

Originally Posted by 99metro

Politics.

Everybody MUST buy a brand new car or you will die.

At least that's what I read.

Well that's what the manufacturers want you to believe anyways!

It's all about managing risk, or for some people, pretending that you can't get hurt or killed in a car. With a little older car you can't really fool yourself that you're invincible. Very scary!

I run chainsaws, fall trees, heat with wood, drink raw milk, eat raw fish, cook my steak rare, snowboard, mountain bike, boot around on my motocross bike, snowmobile on ice, hunt with firearms, and drive an old unsafe Neon to work everyday.

I guess if I did all those things in a risky way I'd probably be dead already! But I don't and hopefully I'll be here for a while to come!

Really we should drive our death traps like a motorcycle rider and try very hard to avoid the collision to begin with by paying attention to what's going on.
Ian

[metromizer]

I've got something to add about roll bars and HANS deices...

It's very true you DON"T want a roll bar in your car unless your 'melon is inside a brain-bucket'. Or invent a better roll bar hidden behind something compliant (available roll bar padding doesn't make it, BTW). In order to help the passenger, you need to absorb any impact over a greater time-space and over the largest area possible (think about the waterballon toss winner's technique at the church picnic).

Maybe the driver and passengers need to dawn an individual air-bag suit. Slip on these coveralls, plug this connector into the car's safety port. You could taylor one for the individual. Close your eyes for a minute and imagine an accident victim looking like the Michelin Man 20ns into a crash

I attended a safety seminar put on by GM at a race a few years ago, the engineer was gushing about the HANS device (and rightfully so). He showed a specially made ultra-high frame per second video of a NASCAR driver experiencing a minor side hit. When they slowed it down and decontructed the footage frame by farme, the driver's neck must have stretched 6" in the incident!

[Clev]

Originally Posted by IndyIan

It's all about managing risk, or for some people, pretending that you can't get hurt or killed in a car. With a little older car you can't really fool yourself that you're invincible. Very scary!

Yup, it's about managing risk. If my commute were straight freeway driving, I'd have no problem in an older car. In my case, however, I have 17 miles of winding uphill/downhill undivided mountain roads. I deal with black ice and snow in the winter, and flatlanders who can't control their cars and spin or swing wide into my lanes year-round. Then I have three intersections where morons run the red at 60+ mph all the time--even though there are cameras at two of them. In my '90 Honda Accord with no airbags, I'm taking on an unnecessary risk, and with a family to support, even moreso than when I was single.

I'm certainly not going to fall for the "you MUST have a giant SUV to be safe" argument (and seeing the head-ons that happen on that mountain, the SUV driver dies just as often as the other guy), but $11k is not out of line for a new 37 mpg rated subcompact made with better materials and methods than in 1990, with front and side airbags and ABS. And since I'd buy new, I'll KNOW it had all of its maintenance done, was broken in properly and will probably last 200,000+ miles.

Again, depends on your situation.

[roflwaffle]

Originally Posted by tjts1

If it all comes down to cautious driving, why have car makers put so much effort into airbags, brakes, ABS, structural rigidity, stability control, seat belt pretensioners, etc in the last 15 years?

Because drivers aren't safe/cautious as a whole.

Originally Posted by tjts1

I absolutely agree that driving habits are extremely important to over all safety. But even the safest driver won't be able to avoid every accident. While amount of driving has increased by every possible metric over the last 15 years, the fatality rate per number of miles driven, total population, number of vehicles registered and number of drivers has decrease dramatically.
FARS Encyclopedia
Are we supposed to believe that drivers today are that much more cautious and all the technological advancements were a waste of time? I don't think so.

No, and I never maintained that drivers today are safer. What I did say is that compared to the safest car out there w/ an average driver, the safest driver with an average car will still be safer. The safest thing to do is not get in an accident. It's the same reason why fatalitiy rates for drivers who have accidents more often are ~4-5 times higher in crashes with semis than they are in the same crashes with safe drivers. In other words, bad drivers who tend to cause accidents, regardless of how safe their car is, should stay away from larger vehicles.

Furthemore, while the safest driver can't avoid every accident, by definition then tend to avoid them especially the life threatening ones, as such it's safer to drive safetly than it is to have a newer/safer car.

[jamesqf]

Suppose we revisit that "deathtrap" claim. According to statistics here: The Odds of Dying | LiveScience the chance of dying as the result of an automobile accident is about 1 in 100. (That is, of all deaths, about 1% will be from auto accidents.) The linked FARS statistics show that all the automobile safety improvements (and other factors such as better roads & medical care) have decreased that only marginally in the 15 years shown.

Seems to me that calling any car a "deathtrap" is a great exaggeration, especially when you stop to reflect on how much the death rates from more common causes like cancer, stroke, and heart disease are increased by voluntary behavioral choices. In other words, if you're really interested in reducing your chance of premature death, forget about the car and invest your energy in things like quitting smoking, exercising more, and losing some weight :-)

[Frank Lee]

ugh. sounds like work. i want my car to do it all for me.

[MetroMPG]

Originally Posted by jamesqf

invest your energy in things like quitting smoking, exercising more, and losing some weight :-)

I'm with Frank. Can I get those at a drive through somewhere?

[tasdrouille]

Originally Posted by jamesqf

quitting smoking

Check

Originally Posted by jamesqf

exercising more

Check

Originally Posted by jamesqf

losing some weight

In my case, that would not be healthy.

[SuperTrooper]

Originally Posted by MetroMPG

I'm with Frank. Can I get those at a drive through somewhere?

You want fries with that?